My ramblings about all things technical

Tag Archives: Virtualisation

Yet again I am honoured to have been given a bloggers pass to VMworld US due to my vExpert work but more importantly the vBrownbag TechTalks and opening acts that the vBrownbag crew will be running in the hang space.

VMworld is always an exciting conference to go to and if you haven’t yet booked your place then let me list some of the reasons I think you should attend as they are the reasons I try to attend every year.

My second reason for attending is networking. I know it should be sessions or HOL but the ability to network with like-minded people and make relationships with people doing cutting edge work with the latest technologies has proved so beneficial to me in the past. The ability to network can be done in several places and at several parties but the best place IMO has to be the hangspace where you can sit at the bloggers table or speak to the VMware communities team as well as (and most importantly) listen and watch the vBrownbag TechTalks. If you have never heard of the TechTalks then a brief overview is below:

Tech Talks originated at VMworld 2012 where they provided an opportunity for community members, whose presentation submissions were not accepted into the main catalogue, to present the core of a topic. #TechTalks are a ten minute presentation by a community member for the benefit of the community. Since almost everyone working in technology has solved problems and learned something almost everyone could present a #TechTalk. The format can be a slide deck or simply talking, they are usually about how to solve a problem or get the most out of a product. The TechTalk is captured on video and published on the vBrownBag YouTube channel.

If the conference Internet connection allows, the talk is also live streamed from the show.

#TechTalks are for community members to reach other community members, any topic that will help other people is good. The one thing that TechTalks are not is an opportunity to present the corporate slide deck about a great product you would like us to buy. #TechTalks are about up skilling and education, the only marketing should be from the TechTalk sponsors who help make the whole thing happen.

Anyone can watch the TechTalks and there are almost always a crowd of the biggest names in the industry,VCDX, vExperts and top 50 vBloggers either watching the TechTalks, Chatting amongst themselves nearby or writing up blogs and uploading videos to their blogs from the bloggers table. The community is very welcoming so please do come say hi and I promise if i am there I’ll try not be grumpy 🙂

Next are the sessions. The VMworld Schedule Builder opened yesterday and within 3 hours a whole bunch were fully booked just to show the sheer interest of people to listen to some of the biggest names talking about the biggest technologies such as Duncan Epping of Yellow-Bricks.com fame talking about “A day in the life of a VSAN IO”. The sessions are always engaging and cover technical depth from beginners all the way to veterans so there is always something to learn. the sessions are also recorded so if you can’t make it to a sessions due to a conflict then by registering for VMworld you get access to all the recorded sessions after the conference for you to watch in your own time.

Next reason are the hands on labs. the labs cover all technologies and not just from VMware but also partners including the EMC Federation. The labs allow you a brilliant way of working your way through using the latest solutions and technologies so if your boss is wondering what NSX is and if it will fit your companies requirements you can do several labs on it and then can not only help your company understand it’s benefits having gone to sessions around NSX but also know how to do tasks inside NSX due to the labs.

Next is the solutions exchange which is firstly an amazing place to talk to all the top vendors and companies working within the virtualisation arena and secondly to maybe even win yourself a few prizes from the plethora of competitions all the stands are running constantly. I personally love walking around the solutions exchange after grabbing some food so that you can listen to all the vendors explain why their solution is the best fit for you and get in some much-needed sustenance as you will be walking A LOT at the conference.

Lastly are the parties, these are normally amazing and seeing as the conference is in Las Vegas the locations are likely to be unbelievable. The parties vary in craziness so you can attend mellow drinks or full or parties in clubs it is entirely up to you. Apart from the VMUnderground party the Welcome Reception kicks off the conference experience with food, drinks, and networking in the Solutions Exchange. The always energetic Welcome Reception is a great way to reconnect with old friends, network, share ideas, and get to know our inviting community of VMware customers, experts, and partners. The parties have only just started getting announced but you can see which ones have been announced on Hans’ blog here. The VMworld party finishes off the conference on Wednesday night and is hosted at the legendary Las Vegas Motor Speedway and the band has been announced and despite what some old farts say about the band selected I can’t wait to listen to Fall Out Boy!!

Hopefully i will see you at the conference and as I stated do come by the hang space and say hello, I will be wearing a vBrownbag shirt with my name and twitter handle on so I should be easy to locate and identify.

Due to my decision to aim for my VCDX6-CMA this year and thereby to get it in in time for the only VCDX-CMA defence of the year (so far) I have signed up for the VCAP6-CMA Design beta exam. I’ve been working on a very large-scale vRA 6.2 project for the past 14 months and so I hope this experience of designing and building it as well as my preparations via these objectives breakdown (plus my study resources) and using some of my VCDX5-DCV knowledge will help me. So I thought I would slowly post up each objective for my own benefit but also hopefully help other people looking to pass the VCAP6-CMA Design exam (beta or GA).I will be consolidating all the objectives on my blog page here

Knowledge

Gather and analyze application requirements for a given scenario.

What I believe is being looked for here is for you to having spoken to the stakeholders and more importantly the application owners and worked out what exactly they require for their applications and the interdependencies the applications have. Applications can be standalone and require no outside communication or could be multi-tiered and require access to the internet or a public git repository for example. Asking the right questions and fully understanding what the applications do and require will then allow you to provide what is required or if it isn’t available start making plans to make it available.

Determine the requirements for a set of applications that will be included in the design.

This is exactly the same as above in my opinion but now instead of just one application you need to get a holistic idea of all the applications in a multi-machine blueprint for example and all the requirements these have to work whilst also not impacting other workloads.

Collect information needed in order to identify application dependencies.

This is done by speaking to the application owners and then validating yourself as even though the application owners say they need certain things you need to validate this and ensure that they are correct and that putting it into the vRA solution doesn’t require another method of doing something. For example maybe the physical F5 load balancers can’t be used for load balancing applications deployed within the vRA solution so you either need to open firewalls to allow this or deploy maybe NSX load balancers within the environment to allow this capability. In the blueprint they recommend the Foundations and Concepts document which is good but personally I think you need to know much much more than the foundations to understand application dependencies and how they would fit within vRA.

They recommend the vRealize Infrastructure Navigator User-s Guide as a study tool and this is certainly a great method of looking at existing applications and understanding heir interdependencies and what the applications are talking to. This also makes sure that the application isn’t talking to some old database server in the background that Joe Blogs setup before he got retrenched and no one has known about since. VIN is a great tool and there’s loads of free videos and resources you can use to learn about the product like this VMware YouTube video.

Given one or more application requirements, determine the impact of the requirements on the design.

Again this is understanding holistically what the applications are talking to and require and then ensuring it is available within the environment or communicable from the environment (services like AD, DNS,IP Management etc). I’m not really sure how you can learn more about this without experience of differing products but understanding how multi-tiered applications work and require resilient back-end resources to function is very important (think of a web applications with multiple web servers, application server and a DB)

I started just prior vMotion being introduced. I was working for a loaning company at the time which was an early adopter of VMware. At the time I was lucky to be part of the project to upgrade to the latest version and saw vMotion for the first time. I knew right then this would change the way Datacenters would work.

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

I had been working with VMware for a number of years now and had held my VCP since 3.5 upgrading it along the way. I figured it was just time to strive for my VCDX. Why couldn’t I reach the VCDX and what harm would come in trying. Little did I know where the journey would really take me.

How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?

Between the VCAP-DCA, VCAP-DCD and VCDX the journey took me a year and half pretty well.

What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?

My advice would be to go for it! It’s not an unachievable exam that sits on a pedestal. It’s a lot of hard work and time commitment but in the end the lessons you will learn while striving for your VCDX is priceless. You will become a much better architect and meet many others striving for the same thing which will only expand your network of professionals. The lessons learned along this journey will only better your career no matter where you end up going.

If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?

Umm I don’t really know lol. I would probably focus more on my defence probably knowing what I know now. Also there would probably be sections of my design I could improve on.

Life after the VCDX? How did your company respond? Was it worth it?

Life after my VCDX has gone back to normal for the most part now that the dust has settled. My company was very excited that I passed and send out a Canadian wide email so now there a lot more VMware questions being fielded my way lol. Was it worth it, yes absolutely! I couldn’t imagine the growth in my career or where an exam track would take me and am extremely appreciative of all of those who helped me along the way. I’m also beyond over joyed to have my VCDX # and am looking forward to seeing my Partner achieve his soon as well.

So this posting isn’t about my opinion of if the dropping of the scenario is good or bad as in all honesty more time in the design scenario sounds great to me. This posting is actually about the resources I used to prepare for my VCDX troubleshooting scenario that I think an architect should know and thereby any good VCDX should also.

The first resources I used were actually the ones I used in my preparations for the VCAP5-DCA as this really makes you learn where all the logs are, what methods there are of troubleshooting issues and what you might be looking for. My study resources list for the VCAP5-DCA is a great start and if you are at the point of defending for VCDX you should have used some of these in your preparations but what I went over again were the troubleshooting videos by David Davis. Even though they are old the methods in them still apply especially ESXTOP etc.

One resource that I felt was the best real world applicable resource I used that didn’t map perfectly to the VCDX scenario methodology but was brilliant was one that was recommended to me by Frank Buechsel who used to work for VMware GSS until recently was a book called Debugging—The Nine Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems. It’s more based at software development but each of the steps applies perfectly to troubleshooting any issues in a technology environment and now that the scenario has been stopped I can put out the loose outline from the book and kinds of questions I wrote up for each of the headings plus what I wanted to say to explain why i was asking in red that I wanted to ask in the scenario and how I thought it might fit:

UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM

When did the problem start exactly?

What is meant to happen? – Why I am asking is because……………and what I’m hoping to achieve…………

When did you see the problem start happening? Is it recurring after a certain task or event or has it only happened once? – Why I am asking is because……………and what I’m hoping to achieve…………

Have any changes been made recently and are they tracked in a change management system? – Why I am asking is because……………and what I’m hoping to achieve…………

Have we collected logs or alerts from the systems and are we using something like vCOps where we can drill down and see alarms or alerts? ? – Why I am asking is because these mechanisms can give us ideas of the failures and possibly where it is happening if not just one location and what I’m hoping to achieve is to find the specific places the errors are showing, what the errors have been in the past if possible but also prepare for the next step of making it fail again so we can possibly see the error again or collect it for the first time.

MAKE IT FAIL

If it happens around a certain event can we try replicate the error and make it happen as often as possible? – Why I am asking is because I want to confirm the error is in fact happening at the point you mention and I’m hoping to achieve the exact step where it is happening and confirm if indeed our assumptions of when it is happening are true or not so we don’t waste time troubleshooting an assumption.

When are we doing the replication of the error can we document each step? – Why I am asking is because I want to confirm it is not just the step where it fails but the steps leading up to it in case a step in the sequence is then causing the eventual failure and I’m hoping to achieve the possible conflict or incorrect setting/step being followed.

QUIT THINKING AND LOOK

Are there any alarms or alerts on the source or destination system/s ? – Why I am asking is because I want to confirm not just the outcome of the failure that you mention but hopefully what is causing the failure and what I’m hoping to achieve is the point/component where we should do the troubleshooting so that we don’t make any unnecessary changes.

For the errors can we search the VMware/Vendor KB/Forums and see if any matches come up for some/all of the errors? – Why I am asking is because some of the errors might be known or even just give us an idea for where to look and what I’m hoping to achieve is to isolate the problem even more and not waste time looking at other components when a kb article might give us a good lead and save us precious time getting the issue fixed

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

For the machines that are failing are they the same configuration/going to the same location/coming from the same location/going over the same path? – Why I am asking is because I want to isolate the good parts/side and the bad parts/side and what I’m hoping to achieve is to focus my attention on the side that is showing the error so we don’t waste time and have less things to cover in the hope we can isolate the problem.

Can we try reverse the step in the opposite direction? – Why I am asking is because……………and what I’m hoping to achieve…………

CHANGE ONE THING AT A TIME

Try a migration/alteration/fix and if it doesn’t work then change it back and try something new. “Please can we migrate the failing machines to another host? “it still fails” Ok please move it back “– Why I am asking is because I don’t want to receive additional/red herring errors due to the change we made and what I’m hoping to achieve is to keep the environment unchanged as much as possible so we don’t cause additional errors/lose methods to troubleshoot.

KEEP AN AUDIT TRAIL (these were more writing out my thoughts and what I felt I needed to remember)

Write down what you did and the outcome and also WRITE DOWN THEIR RESPONSES as these may have clues!! “there are no errors in vSphere” might mean the error is not reaching vSphere for it to log the error so go “upstream” to find the source.

The error doesn’t sound like it is in vSphere so can we please look at the HBA on the host and ensure it is connected correctly and receiving data via ESXTOP.

CHECK THE PLUG

You state that the network connections are correct but please can we get it checked again? – Why I am asking is because I want to confirm that what we state is correct is in fact correct right now and what I’m hoping to achieve is to clear up any assumptions and have clear and confirmed facts about necessary “upstream” components.

Are the steps you are following worked in the past? Are we following the exact steps that worked before? – Why I am asking is because I want to confirm if it has ever worked/if we are following different processes and what I’m hoping to achieve is to confirm if it has ever worked and if a new step if causing the error to happen so we can troubleshoot what the different steps is bringing up.

GET A FRESH VIEW

Not really applicable to VCDX troubleshooting but asking for someone who is an SME in the customer might shed some new light/clear up what the exact problem is.

Now that my VCDX defence is over and hopefully I’ve done enough to be awarded an illustrious number I can pick up my old responsibilities for the EMEA vBrownbag of which I am one of the hosts and decided that the VCP6-CMA track would be a great one to do.

We are going to be going through the blueprint in order so that it is easy to follow and watch as well if you are subscribed to the iTunes feed. So starting next week Tuesday at 7pm GMT (Clocks have changed in Europe so this is GMT not BST) we will be doing objective 1 and it is being covered by one of the co-hosts of the vBrownbag, Frank Buechsel. You can register for the series and future vBrownbag EMEA sessions via the following link https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8540909933274906113 and can also subscribe to the vBrownbag YouTube channel.

If you are interested in covering an objective on the vBrownbag then please get touch as we are always looking for presenters.

How did you get into using VMware?

I was at a Chicago Microsoft Users Group and a company called Altiris was speaking about virtualizing applications with their solution. The whole idea was pretty eye opening to me so when my boss suggested some enhancements to our infrastructure the virtualization concept was brought up again. After some testing we decided that VMware was the clear leader in the space so we virtualized our infrastructure on 4.0.

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

The VCDX certification was a challenge I wasn’t convinced that I could achieve, but I had to know for sure. A few other co-workers already had the credentials and I decided it was the time to find out what I was capable of doing.

How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?

The whole process took me about six months to complete. I already had my VCAP-DCA and VCAP-DCD before I decided to try the VCDX so that helped, but I left myself plenty of time to work out my design before submitting it.

What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?

Talk with your family first about the endeavour. The VCDX is challenging, but more than that time consuming. Expect to spend nights and weekends working on it. The VCDX journey is personal achievement but can’t be done without some support from family, friends and co-workers.

Aside from talking with your family first, the second piece of advice I’d give is don’t be afraid to fail. This isn’t an easy challenge and many really qualified people have stumbled on it. It doesn’t mean you’re not awesome, it just means you need to tweak your design or presentation skills a bit.

If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?

I would have made sure to understand the defense blueprint better from the start. I felt that there were specific sections of the blueprint where I didn’t have enough things in my design to present. Specifically my design didn’t have a lot of “Security” related items so I wasn’t able to talk in depth about it in my defense. If I could have done it over I would have added an additional security requirement and supported it with my design so that I could talk about it in the defense.

Life after the VCDX? How did your company respond? Was it worth it?

After the process was over I was recognized at our company’s Tech Summit and given a bonus for the achievement. The feeling of a sense of accomplishment from meeting a personal goal made the process worth it.